Sweet F A!
On 24 August 1867, at about 1.30 pm, Fannys' mother, Harriet Adams, let the eight year old Fanny, her friend Minnie and Fannys' sister Lizzie go up Tanhouse Lane towards Flood Meadow. In the lane they met Frederick Baker, a 29 year-old solicitors' clerk. Baker offered Minnie and Lizzie three halfpence to go and spend and offered Fanny a halfpence to accompany him towards Shalden a couple of miles north of Alton. She took the coin but refused to go. He carried her into a hops field, out of sight of the other girls.
At about 5 pm, Minnie and Lizzie returned home. Their neighbour, Mrs. Gardiner, asked them where Fanny was, and they told her what had happened. At about 7 pm, Fanny was still missing, and neighbours went searching. They found Fannys' body in the hop field, horribly butchered. Her head and legs had been severed and her eyes removed. Her eyes had been thrown into the nearby river. Her torso had been emptied and her organs scattered. It took several days for all her remains to be found. Her remains were taken to and put back together in a nearby doctor's surgery at 16 Amery Street.
In 1869 new rations of tinned mutton were introduced for British seamen. They were unimpressed by it, and decided it must be the butchered remains of Fanny Adams. The way her body had been strewn over a wide area presumably encouraged speculation that parts of her had been found at the Royal Navy victualling yard in Deptford which was a large facility. Fanny Adams became slang for mutton or stew and then for anything worthless from which comes the current use of sweet Fanny Adams or just sweet F.A.tomean nothing at all.
So next time you open a can of food be grateful it is not sweet F A.
Once inside a crabitat dreary, while I wandered scared and leary
Over many a glamorous empty shell and sandy floor;
All at once there came a banging as if something loudly clanging,
Clanking at my cocohut door
‘Tis the wind and nothing more.’
Open now I threw the shutter and in the bird came with a flutter
As I then began to shudder, wondered at a sight not seen before;
To what would cause this stark intrusion and upon me cause confusion
Worry what this gull’d emplore, why he's here inside my door;
Quoth the Seagull ‘Nevermore’.
Then to me he told his tale, upon the surf he saw arose a tail
And a fin that could only mean a whale;
Teeth to kill with blood and gore, the creature flashed a vile smile
Quoth the Seagull ‘Nevermore’.
It thrashed and caused the sea to foam, and frightened animals all did moan
And scurry and swim and fly ashore, lest they perish and live no more;
By this the gull did scare by telling, all the while my fear is welling
The whale in my mind I see, and from its horror I would flee;
Should it here in my crabitat would be
Quoth the Seagull ‘Nevermore’.
Furthered by the bird’s strange telling, soon it occurred to me a clearing
Of the gull and his real meaning, as all is not quite what it’s seeming;
This odd gull’s whale is not all flesh, but rather is a see-through mesh
Made of fog and mist and spirit, nothing more of this is to it;
A ghost whale is the real subject of this sly lore,
Only this and nothing more.
Thankfully he left no dropping as he flew from my hut topping
Still I feel the fear he caused, and before the surf I always paused;
Looking for the ghost whale form and the fearsome smile that it wore
Quoth the Seagull ‘Nevermore’.
5. The Night of the Stinky Dread
It’s me, Gizmo, and I’m gonna tell you all about the bravest thing I ever did … and I paw-swear that every bit of it is true…
One day, not all that long ago, since I’m not all that old, Momz and me decided to go camping…Now I’d never been camping before, but Momz was sure I’d like it so I said OK…We looked at the map to find a place where we could camp and hunt geocaches (of course) and decided we would go to Myakka River State Park, only a couple hours from home.
The trip started well…we borrowed camping stuff from a friend, drove to the park and set up camp by noon. Momz and I hiked out that afternoon and hunted some caches…all was going well till my super nose detected something…Now Momz will tell you it was a really bad smell, but dawgs, let me tell you this was the most delicious, fascinating sniff I’d ever sniffed…imagine horse poo and cow poo and elephant poo all rolled together into one fabulous stinky nirvana of scent…No dawg could resist it and I took off to find it…I had to roll in this smell whatever it was… I just had to…
I ran and ran and ran as fast as I could towards the mysterious smell…Momz did her best to stay with me, but you know moms…they can’t keep up…All of a sudden Momz yelled out the most blood-curdling scream…she’d seen something that scared her a lot…Her scream was so loud I stopped running and turned to look…Momz was pointing at something moving across the field…Oh My Dog would you look at that…what in Fido’s name could it be?
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he Maco Light is one of North Carolina's great ghost stories. For over a century, mysterious lights were observed and even photographed bobbing up and down along the railroad tracks near Maco Station, a few miles west of Wilmington. When anyone approached the lights, they would disappear. It's even said that Grover Cleveland saw the lights while on whistle stop tour in 1889.The legend of the Maco Light dates back to a tragic night in 1867. A train was rolling along the tracks and the signalman, Joe Baldwin, was sleeping in the caboose. Joe was shocked awake by a violent jerk, and he immediately knew that the caboose had become detached from the rest of the train. Joe also knew that his wasn't the only train scheduled for those tracks that night.
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